Carl E. Brown

The Red Thread

Carl E. Brown

Diamanda Galás

Second part of Brown's Air Cries 'Empty Water' trilogy.

Misery Loves Company

Carl E. Brown

Cindy was asleep under a maple tree/ Rolled over and said to me/ I dreamt of Air Cries/ I turned over, we were lying on the the/ dry cracked mud of a river bed/ Empty Water/ Puppies, Air Cries Only/ They don’t make a sound/ My eyes on fire with nothing/ to quell them/ A piece of steel in the heart/.

Triage

Carl E. Brown, Michael Snow

A dual-projection film where each director made 30 minutes of film without knowledge of what the other was making. Snow's side is a visual encyclopedia of natural and man-made objects. Brown's side transforms footage of a San Francisco cable car.

Memory Fade

Carl E. Brown

The images of “Memory Fade” are not lost…they are spectral and the dance steps repeated over and over in time fights the Fade – a falling down that breaks the spine of the book of life (mankind).

Air Cries 'Empty Water'

Carl E. Brown

These images are oxidized residues, fixed by light and chemical elements, of living organisms. No plastic expression can ever be more than a residue of the experience. Yet, that residue is recognition of an image that has somehow survived the experience, recalling the event, like the undisturbed ashes of an object consumed by flames. When I began working with film and photography in a materially oriented way, I thought that by working with the surface altering and affecting it I could leave my identity, my personality." - Carl E.Brown

Quiet Chaos of Desire

Carl E. Brown

"A good friend of mine died at 9:10 a.m. Saturday, July 21, 2007... my film piece is called "Quiet Chaos of Desire" it comes out of my experience in a sideward glance at my father in-laws passing and the resulting pain for my wife, then the resulting understanding and strength that has arisen from this between us. The flow of blood which creates the bond that is family was broken, bandaged, then coagulated...Life without suffering is impossible. Scars have the power to remind us that the past is real...and although this event is past the sound of death's rattle never leaves." (C.E.B.)

Brownsnow

Carl E. Brown

"'Brownsnow' presents a fascinating combination of two artistic visions: Carl Brown's and Michael Snow's. The form of this expressionistic documentary on Michael Snow's artwork is a complete melding of Carl Brown's rich manipulation of the photographic image with the fundamental concepts of Michael Snow's aesthetic vision. Brown's strengths as a portrait photographer are also well-translated to the filmic medium as he situates key commentators on Snow's artwork (Dennis Reid, R. Bruce Elder, Jonas Mekas, Peggy Gale and Regina Cornwell) in various dramatic Canadian landscapes. Like an abstract expressionist painting in motion, Brown's brilliant work as a colourist deftly employs photographic chemistry to create textures and rhythms that vary across each scene and, in actuality, from frame to frame." (Susan Oxtoby)

L’Invitation au Voyage

Carl E. Brown, Rose Lowder

the fishing boats are out in the water the fish are caught. brought into shore the men haul the catch off the boat. the boat once again goes out to catch and the cycle continues. for centuries this pattern has repeated it's cycle like the tides which roll in and out a story which draws its energy from the sun the moon draws the tides the men work and die and it continues take a moment stretch your eyes and imagine just imagine all stories are true. (CB)

Le Mistral, Beautiful But Terrible

Carl E. Brown

The story is the closure, the film is how pain and anxiety are carried by the wind. There is no use trying to exert control, it only causes the pain/anxiety to linger. It must run its natural course. The Mistral can be beautiful and terrible, if it catches onto you/your soul becomes wrapped in its temper. It dances over the water changing its course to make your light unpredictable, terrible but beautiful ... solo or in tandem. The story is the jazz by which these events take place. To exert any force over the film would not be the story. I am consumed by the flame.

Urban Fire

Carl E. Brown

A child is given birth in the womb of its dead mother. Child’s eyes perceive the death of a city. The last birth combined with the fire and destruction.

Mine's Bedlam

Carl E. Brown

Life is like a gigantic phonograph record fifty feet across. Or like one of those whirling discs at the old amusement park. You get on the disc and it's spinning and the faster it goes, the more centrifugal force builds up to throw you off it. The speed on the outer edge of the disc is so great you have to hold on for dear life just to stay on. The closer you get to the center of the disc, the slower the speed is and the easier it is to stand up. In fact, at the very center there is a point that is completely motionless. In life, most people don't get on the disc at all. They shouldn't get on. They don't have the nerve. They just sit in the stands and watch. Some people like to get on the outer edge and hang on and ride like hell. Others are standing up and falling down, staggering, lurching toward the center. And a few, a very few, reach the middle, that perfect motionless point, and stand up in the dead center of the rearing whirligig as if nothing could be clearer. (CB)

Fine Pain

Carl E. Brown

"This two-screen dual projector film extends Brown's use of chemically tortured celluloid to the breaking point. A collaboration with his long-time sound colleague John Kamevaar, 'Fine Pain' is an extended dialogue between image and sound - like a prolonged riff of free jazz between two masters. The discordant tensions of this film will keep you on the very edge of your seat, astonish you with the mesmerizing range of colour and abstraction and the over-modulated sound vibrations." (Pleasure Dome program notes, Toronto, March 2000)

Drop

Carl E. Brown

"'Drop' restages Newton's celebrated encounter with the heaviest and most voluptuous fruit of the vegetable kingdom. It tracks the eye's apple from the graceless decline of the primal couple to our own fall into the orbits of applied science. Begun at a crossroads soon abandoned, Drop's anxious recollection services this passage from orchard to orison, reminding us of Toto's immortal quip from 'The Wizard of Oz': the less the firma, the more the terra." (Mike Hoolbom)

Full Moon Darkness

Carl E. Brown

A painful but enlightening film on the controversial subject of mental illness - or more particularly, the myth of mental illness. It is a frightening piece of work in that it asks us to assume responsibility for ourselves, our actions. How, after listening to Dr. Thomas Szasz, can we blame someone else anymore? Equally frightening is the realization that mental illness could touch our lives, not just someone else's. Without attempting to give an answer, "Full Moon Darkness" raises many valid questions - questions we should ask ourselves at least once.

Re: Entry

Carl E. Brown

Re: Entry is a film in which fear and anxiety are transplanted with techniques of relaxation. This cross-connection gives birth to a field of unexplored emotion. Through the colour and the movement, we move on this wave of feeling released, by nature, the nature of time, of terrain familiar and not so, and as the film progresses our conception of unrealized or felt vision becomes less solid, more fluid. A retention of water. (Carl Brown)

Condensation of Sensation

Carl E. Brown

"Condensation is an aggregation of moments that appear like crossroads or intersections. The moments when things happen to you. […] I don’t want my film to exist in the past as a nostalgic reminder of the way it was, or as a record. I want people to feel the present as they’re living in the theatre. To feel things you pass every day without noticing. I work on the image, reprocessing the surface to make those things magical again. There’s a shot of houses on my street that has a frenzied jazz feel because of the gestures of camera and emulsion. Everything moves: the film, the sound, your eye, and everything moves in rhythm. That’s what Condensation is all about: it’s a building sensation that gets spilled across the screen." (CB)